Eddie Murphy says he has a few regrets when it comes to his film career.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the 64-year-old “Coming to America” star shared which movies he turned down over the course of his career he wishes he would have said agreed to.
“Yeah, there’s a couple of movies. ‘Ghostbusters,’ I was supposed to do ‘Ghostbusters.’ Didn’t do that. And ‘Rush Hour.’ Didn’t do that. Oh, and ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”Those are my big three ‘wish I would have done’ movies.”
When asked why those specific films stood out to him, Murphy said, “They were huge giant hits.”
The first “Ghostbusters” movie was released in 1984, made more than $243 million at the box office domestically and produced a 1989 sequel. “Rush Hour” had two sequels, while “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” brought in over $156 million domestically.
“Well, with ‘Ghostbusters,’ I did ‘Beverly Hills Cop‘ instead. So, it was like, it was do this or that, so it worked out cool. And ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ just sounded ridiculous to me, and I passed on it. And, afterwards, I was like, ‘Oh that’s f—ing amazing.’”
While he regrets not participating in those movies, his career did not suffer.
He played many memorable characters in movies like “The Nutty Professor” and “Dr. Dolittle.”
He later received an Academy Award nomination for his work in the 2006 movie “Dreamgirls.”
Murphy takes a look back at his legendary career as a comedian in the new Netflix documentary “Being Eddie,” starting from his early days as a teenage comic.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this month, Murphy shared that “it wasn’t going to be this type of documentary” originally, but was supposed to cover his return to stand-up comedy.
“Then COVID hit, and everything shut down,” he explained. “Afterwards, I was like, ‘I’m not sure if I want to do stand-up’ because I was paranoid about COVID. We worked on this thing for five, six years, and, now, coincidentally, it’s my 50th year in show business, a milestone for anybody in any business.”
One of Murphy’s most popular roles was as Donkey in the “Shrek” franchise.
The fifth movie in the franchise is scheduled for release in 2027, 17 years since the fourth movie was released.
The new film will see the return of Cameron Diaz and Mike Myers as Fiona and Shrek and adds Zendaya as one of the couple’s triplets.
“You have a headache after a ‘Shrek’ session. The donkey has a lot of singing. You’re on 10, and you’re doing it over and over again. The great thing, though, is it’s appreciated. Everybody loves the movie,” Murphy said.
“Nothing’s worse than working really hard on something and doing makeup and sweat and all this s—, and then you put it out, and they’d be like, “Two thumbs down.” You go, “I was in the makeup chair for 50 hours.”
